How to Fix The #1 Problem With Your Closing Questions
So you sign up for a seminar or a training session about perfecting your closing questions. The instructor makes it sound so easy. The customer says this, you respond with that. It’s right there on the screen, the perfect script.
Easy-peasy. Follow the script. You, too, can become a hardcore closer! Write hundreds of deals. Make millions of dollars.
All good.
There’s only one problem. The script is not yours. And if you try to use the script the way it is written on the screen, the chances that it’s going to sound natural, normal and conversational are actually quite low.
This is particularly applicable to closing questions. Too often salespeople mistakenly believe that the entire sales process is relational, but that the close is procedural.
That is to say that we build a great relationship by discovering needs and demonstrating the product, but we shift to a different mindset when it comes time for to ask the final closing questions.
The relationship is all touchy-feely. The close is badass. It’s hardcore, baby!
This is exacerbated when we see Alec Baldwin screaming, “Coffee is for Closers”!
Or any of the other training sessions, seminars, or videos that tell you closing is all about being forceful, heavy-handed, manipulative, don’t take no for an answer, etc. etc.
This is not to suggest in any way, shape or form that you should not ask for the sale.
On the contrary, closing questions are both important and necessary! You actually do your customer a great disservice when you force them to come to you asking for permission to buy.
However, closing questions should flow naturally and confidently from the relational tone found in the rest of the sales conversation.
So the next time you go to the workshop, or watch the video, or read the book, don’t simply think that you can regurgitate the script that somebody else wrote.
Your best strategy is to take those scripts and re-work them in your own language. Make your own closing questions consistent with your tone, your personality, and your sales presentation up to that point.
Do not try to be someone that you are not. Your customer will sniff it out in a New York second. And then you will be that salesperson. You know – the one from the seminar.
